one flew over the cuckoos nest Essay -- essays research papers

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NESTKen Keseys newfangled whiz Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest takes place in a genial hospital. The important character, or protagonist is Randle P. McMurphy, a convicted criminal and gambler who feigns insanity to provoke out of a prisoners work ranch. The antagonist is Nurse Ratched also referred to as The Big Nurse . She is in charge of withdrawning the mental ward. The novel is narrated by a patient of the hospital, an American Indian named promontory Bromden. Chief Bromden has been a patient at the hospital longer than any of the others, and is a paranoid-schizophrenic, who is posing as a deaf mute. The Chief often drifts in and out betwixt reality and his psychosis. The conflict in the novel is between McMurphy and The Big Nurse which turns into a battle of mythic proportion. The center of angiotensin converting enzyme Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest is this battle between the two, which Kesey uses to represent many of our cultures more or less influ ential stories. The possessive theme in this novel is that of conformity and its insistency on todays rules of order. In the novel conformity is represented as a machine , or in Chief Bromdens mind a trust . To the Chief, the combine depicts the conformist nine of America, this is evident in one particular separate This remove not scarce explains the Chiefs outlook on society as a machine but also his self outlook and how society treats a person who is unable to conform to society, or more touchingly one who is unable to cope with the inability to conform to society. The chief views the mental hospital as a big machine as well, which is run by The Big Nurse who controls everyone except McMurphy with wires and a control panel. In the Chiefs eyes McMurphy was missed by the combine, as the Chief and the other patients ar casualties of it. Therefore McMurphy is an unconformist and is unencumbered by the wires of The Big Nurse and so he is a threat to the combine. McMurphy repr esents the antithesis to the mechanical regularity, therefore he represents character and its unregularity. Another key theme in Keseys novel is the role of women is society and how it contradicts the males. In keeping with the highly contrasting forces of conformity verses creativity Kesey production to compare the male role to spontaneity, cozyity, and nature and the female role to conformity, sexual repression and ultimately the psychological castration of the male. Nurse ... ...e land to the white heap is tied into the female role theme in the story. His mothers emasculation of his sustain made him smaller not literally but psychologically debilitative him enough to sell the land and become victim to the combine This excerpt best represents Keseys use of combining themes, and especially represent the story of the autochthonal Americans. Kesey combined The role of women, conformity, and the civilization of the native American throughout the novel. Kesey expertly weaves sev eral very brawny stories and themes in to the American myth of Randel McMurphy. He does so in a way that makes a particularly strong statement about American culture. Kesey makes a significant argument about the mechanical regularity supported by Western Civilization. By use Chief Bromden as the Narrator Kesey pulls the reader right in to the heart of the story and also The Great Conversation by using the only character that can shed light on all of the dominant themes present in the novel. Keseys work takes on a shape after-school(prenominal) of the mental hospital which for most readers is hard to relate with, and uses the insane to contest some very real aspects and arguments present in todays world.